Page 31 - Treasure Island - Standard Limited Edition

‘Blandly himself found the Hispaniola, and by the most admirable management got her for the merest trifle.
There is a class of men in Bristol monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. They go the length of declaring that
this honest creature would do anything for money, that the Hispaniola belonged to him, and that he sold it me
absurdly high—the most transparent calumnies. None of them dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship.

‘So far there was not a hitch. The workpeople, to be sure—riggers and what not—were most annoyingly slow;
but time cured that. It was the crew that troubled me.

‘I wished a round score of men—in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French—and I had the worry of
the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very
man that I required.

‘I was standing on the dock, when, by the merest accident, I fell in talk with him. I found he was an old sailor,
kept a public-house, knew all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his health ashore, and wanted a good berth
as cook to get to sea again. He had hobbled down there that morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt.

‘I was monstrously touched—so would you have been—and, out of pure pity, I engaged him on the spot to
be ship’s cook. Long John Silver, he is called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as a recommendation,
since he lost it in his country’s service, under the immortal Hawke. He has no pension, Livesey. Imagine the
abominable age we live in!

‘Well, sir, I thought I had only found a cook, but it was a crew I had discovered. Between Silver and myself we
got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable—not pretty to look at, but fellows, by
their faces, of the most indomitable spirit. I declare we could fight a frigate.

‘Long John even got rid of two out of the six or seven I had already engaged. He showed me in a moment that
they were just the sort of fresh-water swabs we had to fear in an adventure of importance.

‘I am in the most magnificent health and spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like a tree, yet I shall not enjoy a
moment till I hear my old tarpaulins tramping round the capstan. Seaward, ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the
glory of the sea that has turned my head. So now, Livesey, come post; do not lose an hour, if you respect me.

‘Let young Hawkins go at once to see his mother, with Redruth for a guard; and then both come full speed to Bristol.

‘John Trelawney

‘Postscript—I did not tell you that Blandly, who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if we don’t turn up by
the end of August, had found an admirable fellow for sailing master—a stiff man, which I regret, but in all other
respects, a treasure. Long John Silver unearthed a very competent man for a mate, a man named Arrow. I have
a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so things shall go man-o’-war fashion on board the good ship Hispaniola.

‘I forgot to tell you that Silver is a man of substance; I know of my own knowledge that he has a banker’s
account, which has never been overdrawn. He leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of
colour, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as
the health, that sends him back to roving.

‘J. T.

‘P.P.S.—Hawkins may stay one night with his mother.’
I climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the Spy-glass
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